Support Your Local Students

Who owns kids’ creations? The answer may surprise you.

By Carrie Russell -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2006

One of our teachers would like to give students an opportunity to work on our district’s Web page. But there may be problems with that plan. As I recall, some of our former students have sued the district, claiming they own some of the work that was used on our Web site. If our current students design a Web page for us, who owns their creations? —Chuck Kukura, educational technology consultant, Loyal and Granton School Districts, WI

Just like any other creator or author, students hold the copyrights for the work they create as long as it meets the necessary statutory requirements—in other words, as long as it’s original, creative, and fixed in a tangible medium. We often forget about that in school environments. Students complete assignments, such as research papers and book reviews, which are frequently new protected works. In the world outside of school, where authors have the right to make money on their original works, they can choose to publish and sell copies to the public. Students ordinarily just turn their assignments in and forget about them.

If you want students to design your school’s Web site and you want the school to hold the copyright on their work, you should draft a contract that outlines what copyrights are held by whom and for how long. This is similar to a “work for hire” contract, where an individual is hired to create a particular thing and, generally, transfers all rights of copyright to the employer in a written agreement.

If you want to avoid any potential problems regarding ownership, it would be wise to set up a contract with each participating student. You may also choose to compensate them. You will want to include specifics in the agreement that describe what the students will create (such as a school logo), how the students will be compensated, and what rights will transfer to the school and for how long? Since you are often dealing with students who are under 18 years of age, it would be prudent to inform the students’ parents and seek their consent as well—in fact, some states’ contract laws may require that.

Many of our students lug heavy backpacks back and forth between home and school, which can create health problems. To help lighten students’ loads, we were thinking of telling them to keep their textbooks at home. Of course, that means students wouldn’t be able to use them during the school day.

That’s where tablet PCs, or computer notebooks, come in. We’re planning to give one to every child, and we thought we would digitize the textbooks so kids could use them in class. We would provide limited access to the digital versions (in PDF form) through a secured server. According to our interpretation of the TEACH Act, our plan seems fine as long as the texts are not already available in an electronic format and our security is maintained. Is that correct? —Sam Morris, instructional technology director, Cary Academy, Cary, NC

Not exactly. The TEACH Act deals solely with exemptions to the public performance and display rights and not reproduction rights (although Section 112 of the TEACH Act does include some allowances for reproducing analog formats to digital formats in order to display the work for classroom purposes). In this situation, we need to turn to our old friend, fair use (Section 107 of the copyright law). Can the school make digital copies of an entire textbook for its students? That would be an obvious infringement if not for the fact that each student also owns a copy of the textbook that has been purchased by the school. Given that access to the digital versions will be restricted to those students who own a copy of the book, I think the use is fair. The school should advise students that the PDF versions are protected by copyright and students are not allowed to reproduce or distribute them. You should prominently display the original copyright statement on the PDF copies. Also, students should not retain PDF copies of the text after the course has concluded. Alternatively, one PDF copy could be made and accessed by the students via a secure school network rather than loading a PDF onto each laptop.